Professional iPhone camera app, Pearla, has a new, huge update. Pearla Verana IV, as it’s officially known, adds a wide array of new features, including PearlaRAW, the “first and only” way to internally capture 14-bit RAW stills and video on iPhone without any external storage. Plus there’s a new professional editing app, Revela, and a simple camera app, Joya.

The new Pearla Verana app name reflects a broader change for the studio behind it. Developer Guy Cassidy had been making Pearla through his software company, House of Mars. He has now given the Pearla family of apps its own home, Swiss company Pearla Mostra. House of Mars continues to exist with its own products, but the Pearla suite of apps is now under Pearla Mostra’s umbrella.

Pearla Verana IV: A Groundbreaking Flagship iPhone Camera App

Back to Pearla Verana IV. While the app has a new name, its core promise remains the same. It is a professional-grade iPhone camera app with highly sophisticated film emulation, robust color rendering, log and RAW shooting, and much more.

Pearla Verana IV takes all of these features and expands them in meaningful ways, plus adds some big all-new functionality.

The highlight new feature is PearlaRAW, which Cassidy and Pearla Mostra describe as “the first and only way to capture 14-bit RAW stills and record 14-bit RAW video internally on an iPhone, on all supported iPhones.”

As Pearla Mostra explains, Apple’s ProRes RAW is a 12-bit file that only records to external storage. Apple’s ProRAW format is 10-bit and only for stills. Apple’s Bayer RAW, which is used by many third-party camera apps, is a 12-bit photo file. So PearlaRAW really sets itself apart.

When using PearlaRAW, Pearla Verana IV can capture 14-bit RAW files at up to 25 frames per second or 14 frames per second in 12-bit RAW, with pre-capture shooting. Cassidy says this is available in no other iPhone app and only some high-end mirrorless cameras.

Additional new capture features in the app include a shutter priority exposure mode for videographers who want to lock in a specific shutter speed or photographers seeking to capture fast-paced action. Verana continuously auto-adjusts the ISO to support the selected shutter speed. There’s also a new intervalometer function across both still and motion recording.

On the color rendering side of things, which is a huge focus of Pearla Verana IV, like it was with its predecessor, there are some big changes on offer. RealHUE 2 adds on-device fine-tuning to color. Pearla was the first and remains the only color-calibrated iPhone camera app individually calibrated for each supported device.

There’s a new Pearla Wide Gamut (PWG) working color space that supports log recording, the app’s film emulation, HDR, RAW, and custom color profiles. As Pearla Mostra explains, PWG has been engineered “around human vision itself.”

“Its primaries enclose the entire chromaticity region of the CIE 1931 2° standard observer (the spectral locus closed by the line of purples), so 100% of the real color recorded by any camera is representable without clipping, while the gamut remains the tightest such container, spending no more of its encoding range on non-physical color than the geometry requires,” the company says.

There’s a new film emulation engine inside Pearla Verana IV, which adds luminance-aware grain and halation. This works in real time up to 4Kp60, so it also works for video recording.

In addition to the existing S-Log3, LogC3, C-Log3, F-Log/F-Log2, V-Log, N-Log, and Blackmagic Film Gen 5 color spaces, Pearla Verana IV adds Apple Log 2, DJI D-Log, and Insta360 I-Log support.

For video users, there’s new real-time spatial audio mixing, false color monitoring, and a speech-activated teleprompter function inside the updated app.

The app also adds a limited version of Pearla Revela’s RAW editing capabilities, a new Quick Menu, remote capture from a second iPhone or Apple Watch, Tilta Nucleus-M support, and cloud syncing for profiles, settings, and media.

Pearla Joya: A New, Simple-to-Use iPhone Camera App

But wait, there’s more. New company Pearla Mostra is having a very busy day. Alongside Pearla Verana IV, a decidedly professional iPhone camera app, Pearla Mostra unveiled Pearla Joya, an everyday camera app for everyone.

Joya is built for content creators who want Verana’s image quality and audio performance but don’t need all the manual controls.

“No manual-everything, no advanced codecs, no monitoring tools,” Pearla Mostra says, adding that Joya is “as simple to use” as iPhone’s built-in camera app.

Joya is not a filter-based camera app. It still features Pearla Verana’s RealHUE 2 color engine, authentic film emulation with grain and halation, and open gate recording. It just ditches all the fancy codecs and controls.

Pricing and Availability

Pearla Joya is available in beta now for paid Pearla III subscribers. When the app launches in full in August, it will be $24.99 per year.

Image creditsPearla Mostra. Header image created using an asset licensed via Depositphotos.com.